


Halloween Is for Memories

by Elfwreck



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Community: fic_promptly, Friendship, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Grief/Mourning, Halloween, Memories, Not Beta Read, Prompt Fic, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 18:30:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11973174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elfwreck/pseuds/Elfwreck
Summary: Nothing will bring their friends back, but Dick and Roy can continue their legacy.





	Halloween Is for Memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kayim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayim/gifts).



> Takes place at a particular point in the New-52 continuity which has since, of course, been retconned or fixed or otherwise erased. 
> 
> Written for a [prompt on fic_promptly](https://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/168668.html?thread=7542236#cmt7542236) at Dreamwidth: "They've lost too many friends over the years." This sat in my g'docs as a half-finished draft for almost 5 years.

If they start drinking, they'll never stop, so they find other ways to cope with grief.

After Lian is safely snuggled in bed with a pillowcase full of candy on the dresser, Roy and Dick get dressed again. Late night Halloween, the drunks come out and the older kids turn mean, and there is always, always someone who thinks little kids with goodies are easy targets.

They stick to New York. Halloween in Gotham is Bruce's project; if he needs help, he'll (demand) ask, or at least, Oracle will let them know. They start in the residential zones and slowly work toward commercial areas with the lights and parties and bars.

This year's going to be one of the bad ones.

Roy was distracted by a little girl who looks almost like Lian, so Dick spotted the first target--two teenage boys in trenchcoats, standing in the shadows of a huge juniper bush at a dark corner house. The boys were dragging kids out of their groups, grabbing a handful or two of candy, and setting the little kids loose with a threat if they tell. Dick got that mean Nightwing look on his face, and Roy waited in a tree to watch.

Dick climbed up the house behind them, and jumped off the roof with a leap he must've learned as a toddler. In the air he did a somersault into a twist--not enough height for anything more--and landed between them and the street, facing them with his arms on his hips, a perfect circus pose.

They barely had time to look confused before he said, "This is for John and Mary," then flipped back onto his hands and kicked them both, one foot in the center of each of their chests. They fell down, candy scattering.

Dick zip-stripped their wrists and ankles together--that should be enough to keep them out of trouble until the little kids had all gone home--and they're off again. Roy spotted his first target, a guy dressed as a fireman who was using an axe to break into cars while the parents were walking their kids through the neighborhood. He whispered his father's name as he put an arrow into the guy's shoulder.

After that, they hit the party zones. They wandered into a college dorm and got compliments on their costumes, until they found a couch where a dark-haired girl could barely sit upright. There was a guy sitting on each side of her, groping her legs and pushing her skirt up, and one leaning over her back and giving a "massage" with hands that keep dipping into her blouse. She kept pushing their hands away, but she was obviously too drunk to keep that up for long. The boys kept looking at each other and winking; they were just waiting for her to be too far gone to fend them off or make noise.

Dick and Roy looked at each other. "Donna," they said in unison, and it's on. Dick grabbed the one on the left and flipped him over the back of the couch; Roy punched the one on the right so he folded over, and Roy managed to throw him to the side before he started heaving. They both looked up at the guy behind her, and he started to back off, holding his hands up… Roy grinned meanly and stepped forward, and the guy ran. Roy chased him out of the party while Dick delivered the girl (mumbling, "but my name's not Donna") to the dorm mother, who would make sure she slept it off... alone.

They left the party and hit the town hard, finding too many similarities to the people they've lost. A mugger was trying to rob a Deaf man, screaming at him while waving a gun erratically, and Dick said "Joey" before slamming into him. Roy called the cops and talked with the victim in Sign until they arrived. They broke up an arms deal on a boat; Roy said "Garth" just before they threw the weapons into the water.

Then they found It. There's always an _It_ , the one that will break their night, the one that makes it all too real and too recent. Last year, it was a creepy pimp in a polyester suit whose only resemblance to Matches Mallone was the fact that he had a moustache; he *was* out of the hospital by Easter--Roy checked--but only because Roy took Dick's last two kicks himself. The year after Ollie died, Roy turned a dirty politician into a pincushion--fourteen carefully non-fatal arrows--before Dick wrested his bow away.

Roy knew what it would be this year, but not who. But he was watching for it, and he spotted it before Dick, but only barely.

Big guy, obviously at least half-drunk, in a drunk's version of a pirate costume: cheap black vest, white shirt, red scarf on his head, but the cutlass he was waving around was real. He chopped at some of the trees as they walked past, taking little chips out of the trunks and saying "arr" each time he did so.

With the hand that wasn't on the sword, he was holding the hand of a kid in a kid's pirate outfit: an eyepatch and cheap felt hat with a skull printed on the front. The kid's other hand had a plastic pumpkin, and he dragged his feet and stumbled, trying to keep up. He must be miserable, which made sense because it was after midnight and he wasn't dressed for the cold.

The kid was shivering in his t-shirt. In his--oh fuck, Roy realized-- _Batman_ t-shirt, and if he hadn't already thought this was it, he'd know now. The kid tugged on the man's hand and says "I wanna go home. Can we go home now? I have enough candy, I promise."

The man shook his head. "No fuckin' way, kid. I promisshd yer mom I'd take you tricker treating, an' I am, so shaddup already."

Roy felt more than heard Dick growl beside him. He knew they were both trying to decide how much trauma was acceptable for the kid to see.

The man dragged the kid into a bar, and they dropped to the street in front of it, quick enough to see what was happening before the door closed. Dick tossed one of his wing-dings, low and casual-looking, so it caught on the door jamb and kept the door from closing all the way. Someone'd notice it soon--the cold air, if nothing else--but they had a clear enough view for a few moments. The place was nearly empty; some bars were packed on Halloween, but the regulars at this one apparently did their partying elsewhere.

The man slurred a greeting: "Trick 'r treat, ev'ryone; thiszh here's my gir'frien'z brat, so han' over some candy f'r him, an' I'll have a beer."

Roy could see the guy grab a handful of peanuts from the dish on the bar and drop them into the kid's pumpkin. The bartender looked at the kid and started to say, "He can't be--" and Roy knew how that one ended, and apparently so did the drunk.

"'Courshe he can. It'sh Halloween. He'zh not really here, he'zh jus' trick-r-treating an' then he's gonna wait in the car while I have a drink."

He nudged the kid, almost hard enough to knock him over. The kid looked up at the bartender, and gave an obviously-rehearsed speech, "I wanna keep trick-or-treating." The bartender narrowed his eyes as looked from the kid to the big guy, who pointed at the pumpkin and shrugged.

The bartender sighed and started to reach for a glass, mumbling something about "takes all kinds" when the kid whispered, "Can we go home after this one?"

The bartender stopped what he was doing and turned back to face the guy. "So, I'm thinkin' you've maybe had enough for tonight. And I'm thinking that little fellow needs to be in bed about now, so howabout you take him on home. You're way too drunk to drive, especially with a kid in the car, so hand over your keys and I'll call you a taxi." He held out his hand expectantly.

Pirate Dude was having none of that. "Don' need no fuckin' taxi," he slurred. "Jus' need a beer--grog, I mean. Arr. G'me a grog. M'first mate here c'n wait ousside." And he nudged the kid toward the door.

The bar wasn't exactly warm, but it was a lot warmer than the street, and the kid shook his head mutely. The bartender said, "Hey, buddy," and that's when it broke.

"Not yer fuckin' buddy!" the guy yelled, and swung the cutlass at the bartender's outstretched hand--hard enough to cut it off, if his reflexes had been any slower. It nicked him instead, a nasty gash down his pinky, and he yelled in pain as he ducked behind the bar.

Pirate Dude dove after him, yelling about beer; the kid backed up quickly (and silently, a sign that Pirate Dude being violent was more familiar to him than Roy wanted to think about) to the wall, and Dick was through the door before Roy noticed him moving. Roy yelled, "Get the kid!" and leapt into the action.

If Dick was taking care of a kid, he wouldn't be committing murder.

Not that Roy had any actual qualms about Drunk Pirate winding up dead, but he was pretty sure that the kid shouldn't see that, and while he didn't share the Bats' absolute aversion to killing, he knew that his judgement wasn't the best tonight. _No killing on Halloween_ was one of the first rules they'd set up - for Roy, to avoid excess, and for Dick, to avoid crossing that line.

It didn't matter, because the guy's reflexes were shit. He did recognize a threat in time to raise the sword again, but nowhere near fast enough to get it aimed. Roy grabbed the raised sword arm and tackled him, and he went down hard. He fell onto a chair which slid out of the way and let him slam onto his back, and Roy followed him all the way down, pinning the sword arm to the floor and landing with one knee pinning his chest.

Twist of his wrist, and the guy dropped the cutlass with a yelp. Punch to his face, and he looked glassy-eyed. The guy tried to sit up, so Roy punched him again, then grabbed the sword and stood up. The guy was still moving, twisting to one side, so… a couple of well-placed kicks and he wouldn't be having any post-holiday funtimes with his girlfriend this week. Also, he stopped trying to get up. Roy considered slamming his kidneys a few times, but realized he should check on Dick.

The kid was getting the full Nightwing Hug Experience, which could be overwhelming for adults; the kid must've thought he'd been surrounded by a black and blue octopus. The hug also worked to shield the kid's eyes from the fight, and since that looked like it was going fine, Roy took a moment to zip-tie the asshole's wrists and ankles together.

The bartender, who'd barely had time to blink, picked up the phone. Roy reached over the bar and grabbed him by the shoulder. "Don't call 911," he said.

"What? Why not?"

"'Cause it's not an emergency anymore. He's down, we're gonna take care of the kid, and the 911 crew is way overworked tonight anyway. Call on the normal police line, and let him," Roy nodded at the Whining Pirate on the floor, "stew for a while until they get here."

The bartender nodded, and reached for the folder under the phone--must be where they keep non-emergency numbers. "What're you gonna do with the kid?"

"I don't know yet, but we're not sending him back to a house with that guy."

Roy could hear Dick talking with the kid - _What's your name? Mikey. Where do you live? Jenner Street. Is your mom home? No, she's working. Where does she work? I don't know._ That last was half-wail.

The bartender looked at the guy on the floor, looked over at Nightwing talking to the kid, and said, "Okay. But you gotta get him outta here before the cops show up."

Roy grinned. "We're on it."

In a few minutes, the three of them were two blocks away at an all-night diner; the kid was wearing a silver thermal blanket like a cape and eating a burger and grilled cheese sandwich--his first meal of the day. Roy enjoyed his own burger while Dick chatted with the kid, showed him how to throw a punch without breaking his fingers, and made him memorize a phone number--Oracle's--in case he needed help.

Neither Dick nor Roy was inclined to call OCFS; their own experiences with "protective services" hadn't been good. That meant taking the kid back to their bikes, a bit more than a mile away, to drive him home and wait to have a talk with his Mom. Of course, Dick had to do at least one flying leap off a building while holding on to Mikey; when he landed, the kid's eyes were _shining_ and he'd forgotten all about being cold and hungry and not getting real candy; he got to be _pirate superhero_ for Halloween.

And Dick got to rescue at least one little boy this year. It wasn't enough--it would never be enough--but it gave them a reason to keep going, keep fighting in honor of the memories of the ones they'd lost.


End file.
